Although our entire development staff (including me) thinks it’s utterly stupid, I had to use the Zend Encoder.

[bobbojones@malahide pubph]$ zendenc pubph.php pubph.enc.php
root privileges are required in order to preserve ownerships of encoded files

That’s strange.  I own the original file, and I’m running the executable.  Shouldn’t I just naturally own its output files?  I’ll just play along for fun.

[bobbojones@malahide pubph]$ sudo zendenc pubph.php pubph.enc.php
Cannot stat pubph.php: Permission denied

Wait, what do you mean, “Permission denied?”  I said sudo!  You know, sudo?  As in, “Superuser access that authorizes me to do absolutely anything I want on this machine up to and including destroying its entire contents, your stupid executable included?”  Sudo?  Sound familiar?  Even a little?  No?

Blërg.

(As it turns out, the first one worked just fine.  The “root privileges are required” reprimand is apparently only a warning, and just I didn’t happen to check the output immediately.  Still, I feel as if my authority as a sudoer has been undermined.)